mark.waltz American film makers always believe that the bad guys are always caught at some point, even if it is years after they commit their crimes. Here, the criminals are of two different backgrounds: an important Nazi officer known as "the butcher" and an American gangster who is in cahoots with the nasty Nazi and his brood of German thugs. It all comes out in the open when a married man contacts movie photographer Alan Baxter on the pretext of getting the movie footage and negative of him and a woman he wasn't married to and the intrigue that comes out of that when his boss recognizes one of the men walking out of the bank they were shooting in. This leads to a chase throughout New York City between Baxter, boss Loring Smith and the beautiful Virginia Gilmore who isn't quite the innocent young reporter she seems to be. Lots of great location footage, including a chase on a ferry, fill this engaging film noir with lots of intrigue and plenty of nefarious characters popping in and out of the action.

bkoganbing That trans-Atlantic studio Eagle-Lion is the responsible party for giving us Close-Up. A film that seems strange to categorize and ends up being bad noir, bad mystery, and the comic relief of Joey Faye falls flatter than the desert.Alan Baxter and Joey Faye are a pair of newsreel cameramen who on a fashion shoot outside a bank get some footage of a missing Nazi war criminal Richard Kollmar. Kollmar's name in the film is Martin Beaumont, get it Martin Borrmann. I assure in 1948 no one would have missed that connection. Of course this was way before the Russians bothered to tell the world they killed Borrmann in Berlin.In any event Kollmar's in New York and looking to travel farther. He's hooked up with gangster Phillip Huston to get transportation to a safe haven for Nazis. But Huston has plans of his own for Borrmann's money. He wants a lot more than the $15,000.00 he's been promised.Virginia Gilmore is the female lead, she's the moll for Huston and serves as one of many attempts to get the incriminating film footage. This woman deserves better than being in this film. Joey Faye is Alan Baxter's sidekick and simply isn't funny.The film's premise was interesting and could have been better with proper treatment at an A Studio.

JohnHowardReid Shot entirely in Manhattan, using local talent (I love the scenes on board the Hudson River Ferry and at the Ninety-first Street seaplane landing), "Close-Up" is a film noir with a difference. I'll admit that the script tends to be somewhat juvenile. I wondered what a classy producer like Richard Kollmar was doing in it until I remembered that he had a weekly side job as radio's Boston Blackie, having taken over from Chester Morris. Who could ever forget each week's sonorous introduction: "Friend to those who have no friends! Enemy to those who make him an enemy!" And of course Kollmar was later the other half of radio's "Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick". As it happened, "Close-Up" was his only movie, though he did make a couple of TV appearances and was the host of "Guess What!:But I digress! The point I'm making is that while "Close-Up" is occasionally somewhat amateurish in script and flat-footed in direction, it's never boring or dull. What's more, an appropriately noirish pictorial tone in lighting and atmosphere is masterfully created by New York's resident cinematographer, Bill Miller. And of equal importance, this movie marks the film debut of an original score by the famed orchestrator, Jerome Moross, who later composed for "The Big Country" (1958) which I consider to be the best music score ever written for a movie.

Benoit Vanhees Without realizing it, two newsreel reporters took pictures of a surviving nazi-leader in front of a bank, while filming fashion mannequins in the streets of New York. The German, who was thought to have died during the war, was inquiring if he could recuperate a large sum of money. He needs it, to be able to continue Hitler's dream after the dictator's death. He is helped by a criminal gang, which is only in it for a slice of the money, not for political reasons. Hal Ericson's description in the All Movie Guide of the gang as being a "secret neo-nazi gang" is therefor incorrect. The gang will make several attempts to recuperate the film and its negatives, including by kidnapping one of the reporters. The boss of the two reporters however discovers whose face has been captured on the newsreel, and contacts the authorities.The problem with this rare B movie is that it just can't decide whether it wants to be a kind of political thriller, a crime movie or some kind of comedy. The final result therefor isn't very bright, without being terrible at the same time. The movie sure is watchable till the predictable end, but well... The script isn't always very convincing or logical. While the Nazi leader's henchman doesn't hesitate to kill one of the criminals, the 'hero' has more luck, and only gets knocked out with a gun on his head. Dialogs are quite poor, no cute « one-liners », no quick exchanges of wisecracks etc. Well, the hero's colleague is trying to be a funny guy every now and then, but the movie would have done perfectly well without this kind of clowning.Alan Baxter may be in the words of Hal Ericson a "character actor", but you won't see very much of it in this movie. Alan Ladd playing like he played in The Glass Key though would have made a good choice. That would have given the movie that extra status it desperately needed to rise above its mediocrity. The soundtrack doesn't help either. While the main title track you'll hear while the names of the actors are shown is OK, the music during the key moments of the movie doesn't support the action. I'd rather qualify it as simply irritating. I'd give it a 6/10